1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a cleaning apparatus and a cleaning method, which remove and recover foreign matter or dust, liquid and the like from a cleaning object to be cleaned by spraying, for example, high-pressure air onto the cleaning object. Particularly, the present invention relates to a dust removing technique utilizing the Coanda effect to make the recovery of the air containing the removed dust and the like into an exhaust-introducing passage along a wall surface.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, a number of techniques have been proposed as the technique for removing dust from a cleaning object. For example, in Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2000-271551 (page 2, FIG. 1), there is proposed a method for removing liquid adhered to an object in which when removing liquid adhered to a steel plate by spraying compressed gas, an ultrasonic nozzle is used to apply ultrasonic waves to the air and spray on it. Further, in Japanese Patent Application Publication No. HEI7-275746 (page 4, FIG. 1), there is proposed a cleaning apparatus for removing deposits adhered to a cleaning surface of an object by spraying high pressure gas onto the cleaning surface of the object while supplying a cleaning solution that is made into particles by applying ultrasonic vibration to a sprayed region of the high-pressure gas.
However, none of the techniques described in Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2000-271551 and Japanese Patent Application Publication No. HEI7-275746 are equipped with a mechanism for recovering the removed deposit. For this reason, there are environmental problems such that the removed deposit readheres to the cleaning object, and of the area around the cleaning apparatus become dirty.
Therefore, there also is proposed a cleaning apparatus equipped with a mechanism for recovering the removed deposit. A cleaning apparatus of Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2002-316110 (page 3, FIG. 1) prevents dust from readhereing to a cleaning object by spraying compressed gas, to which ultrasonic vibration has been applied, and sucking the removed dust through a suction nozzle. Further, a cleaning apparatus of Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2001-21899 (pages 3 and 4, FIG. 1) removes dust by applying ultrasonic vibration to the air sprayed onto a substrate that is a cleaning object, and sucks and recovers the removed dust, thereby preventing the dust from readhereing to the substrate.
In FIG. 1, there also is proposed a cleaning apparatus in which an air nozzle 101 for spraying high pressure air is disposed adjacent to a cleaning surface 102a of a mounting substrate 102 to mount an electronic component thereon, for example, and an exhaust nozzle 103 of a dust collector to recover the dust removed from the cleaning surface 102a by the high-pressure air (air blow) blown from the air nozzle 101 to the cleaning surface 102a is disposed so as to surround the air nozzle 101, in order to vacuum and recover the removed dust through the exhaust nozzle 103.
Any of the cleaning apparatuses shown in these patent documents land 2, and in FIG. 1 prevents leakage of high-pressure air by disposing the air nozzle 101 for blowing high-pressure air so as to be substantially perpendicular with respect to the mounting substrate 102 that is a cleaning object.